Seemed so distant to me, but it’s finally happened. Fanciest Author Box, The Only Author Box Plugin You’ll Ever Need, has been officially out for two weeks on CodeCanyon.

It took us little over a month to figure out all the details, think through all the different situations blog owners and authors might encounter and develop an author bio plugin that should satisfy even the neediest of you. Fanciest Author Box is now featured on CodeCanyon, but the beginning was far from great.

Soft Reject Situation

Nobody’s quite ready for it. You always hope for the best, you’ve double checked everything, your code is clean, screenshots and demo ready and your documentation branded. Well, it happened to us. It took just one day for Envato reviewers to do an “inspection” of our Fanciest Author Box and this is what waited for us in our ThematoSoup inbox –

Your item Fanciest Author Box isn’t quite ready for CodeCanyon. This is the reason given by our item inspector:

Welcome to CodeCanyon. :)

The issue here is that the documentation is sorely lacking.

Most importantly, remember that buyers may not be technically inclined. They may just be looking for an item to drop into their existing code base.

Also keep in mind that a typical user won’t really know about all the features your system brings to the table. With them in mind, you should also look into providing a quick start guide of some sort. It need not be long: a short one will do.

We knew we needed a more detailed documentation of our author box plugin for people who prefer going over “readme” files before actually testing stuff. Sani, our Manic developer, stayed up all night in order to get this right and boy, did he deliver.

Now, the plugin is well documented and easy for anyone to install and customize. We also plan on releasing a screencast overview for it, which is why we bought this fellow – AKG Perception 120 USB.

Give Me Features, I Want Features

You never know what you as an author might need on your website, so we packed Fanciest Author Box with features and here’s a list of some of them: